After playing nine holes in the shortened Buick Classic Pro-Am yesterday, Ernie Els, a two-time former Open champ and two-time winner of this event, said the rough at Westchester Country Club is tougher than it was last week at Olympia Fields in Illinois.

“This is almost like Bethpage last year,” Els said referring to last year’s Open course on Long Island. “It’s really high. If you go in there [the rough] this year, you can’t get it to the green. It’s really high. It’s almost twice as long as last week.”

The Walter Travis-designed course has long been a favorite among PGA players because it is old-school. There are no man-made water hazards, no stadium seating, no extraneous bunkers.

“It’s different because you have to shape shots,” Tiger Woods said. When this golf course is hard and fast is when you really have to create shots. You can’t just hit a straight ball out there and expect it to stay in the fairway and the same way with the greens.”

The par-71, 6,783-yard course will not be hard and fast this week. It will be long and wet, with that Little-Shop-of-Horrors rough waiting to swallow a ball.

“If you go into the rough, you’re going to have a serious problem,” Els said.

Els, who won here in 1996 and 1997, Woods, U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk, and former Buick Classic Champs Sergio Garcia (2001), Vijay Singh (1995) and Lee Janzen (1994) are among the field of 156 competing for the $900,000 winner’s purse. Chris Smith, last year’s champ, said distance off the tee will help but no one is going to muscle this course to its knees.

“It’s not just a golf course where you can just stand on the tee and hit it as hard as you can, which should be something I like, but I’d much rather play a course that you have to work the ball,” Smith said.

Which is exactly what the players must do on Nos. 8, 11, and 12. Last year, No.12 was the 15th most difficult hole on the PGA Tour. The par-four, 485-yard dogleg left yielded just 26 birdies and the average score was 4.368.

The 11th hole, another long par four (442 yards), which has a stream cutting across the fairway which could come into play off the tee, was the 19th toughest hole on the tour in 2002. The eighth (par four, 464 yards) was tied for 47th toughest.

“This has a feel,” Furyk said. “I would put it in the Top 10 of the courses we play on the PGA Tour. I like the old traditional course; keep the ball below the pin, keep the ball around the greens.”